22. February 2025
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Media Review

Eric Church – &

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Eric Church - &

Eric Church - &
4.4

Rating

 4.4/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Very personal songs
  • Nice idea: the middle part of the trilogy is for fan club members only

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Just six songs - too short to be an album to me

The second part of Eric Church’s Heart & Soul trilogy was likely the most fascinating one to me before I started listening to the songs. While Heart and Soul are publicly available, the middle part is only available on vinyl and can only be purchased by members of Eric Church’s fan club, the Church Choir. The official release date is between the two other albums, on 20h April 2021. However, at least two out of the six songs became public to all listeners, as they have been released as singles.

Eric Church – & – Track by Track

The second part of the Trilogy contains six tracks and lasts 23 minutes.

1. Through My Ray-Bans

The first song of & is the longest of the whole set of three albums. It is a song in which Eric Chruch is looking into an imaginative, magical world through his signature accessory, his Ray-Bans.

Everybody’s got their arms around
Everybody else’s shoulders
Guardin’ against the world outside
Like an army of Friday night soldiers
The battle wages tomorrow
But tonight you don’t give a damn
Wish you could stay the way I see you
Through my Ray-Bans

2. Doing Life With Me

Second song, second single release. The rattles and the acoustic guitar give a direct and very intimate listening experience. Listening to Church in this song is just wonderful.

Everybody’s got their arms around
Everybody else’s shoulders
Guardin’ against the world outside
Like an army of Friday night soldiers
The battle wages tomorrow
But tonight you don’t give a damn
Wish you could stay the way I see you
Through my Ray-Bans

3. Do Side

I have been a bit of confused during the review, as the positions of Do Side and Kiss Her Goodbye are twisted in the music promotion compared to the press release. Do Side is a very dark country song, which has a powerful Southern Rock touch in the chorus, which is in a significant contrast to the almost spoken verses. Nice.

4. Kiss Her Goodbye

The album keeps with its emotional elements – and Kiss Her Goodbye is definitely a big candidate for the best ballad on the whole set of Heart & Soul songs. Just an amazing listen:

Kiss her in the morning
Kiss her when I got home
Kiss her on a plane to Paris or on the streets of Rome
Kiss her just for nothing
Just to let her know she was on my mind
My lips can’t seem to drink up enough neon
To kiss her goodbye

5. Mad Man

Mad Man starts like slow and quiet song and almost feels a bit too shy in this set of amazing songs. However, about a minute before the end of the track, there is some sort of big bang and the song is powerful with smashing riffs. Nice surprise.

6. Lone Wolf

Now this lone wolf is done runnin’ down the moon
In the daylight dark of the night this heart is howlin’ for you
Yeah, this lone wolf ain’t lonely anymore
‘Cause you weren’t afraid to reach out and save a lone wolf at your door

Even when Church is singing Yeah, your hand in mine makes my heart soar like a hallelujah choir and a female backing choir is replying Hallelujah at the end of the second verse, the song does not feel like kitsch. The Chief goes for the right tunes, regardless if it is about love or critic songs about social topics. The Lone Wolf is finally saying farewell to the listener with a powerful guitar part. All listeners are back in the game. Next song will be Rock & Roll found me on the album Soul.

 

Eric Church – Heart & Soul – Trilogy (Links)

Here are the links to all albums of the trilogy. I will add them once the reviews have been published:

 

Eric Church – & – Spotify

The second album of the trilogy is for the Eric Church fanclub, the Church Choir, only. Thus, I do not expect to have a Spotify widget in this review.

 

Eric Church – & – My View

Here we go, six more songs are done and Heart & Soul is about to go on the finish straight with soul. It would be too harsh to say that I was a bit of disappointed of &. It is definitely a great selection of tracks, but Heart was just better – and six songs are quite short to call this second part an album. On the other hand, the Church Choir fans are receiving very intimate and personal songs. I guess that this is a lot of value to many of them. And, of course, we are still in the Top Pick! range.

 

 

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